St Joseph Center

Outreach and engagement includes the sjc homeless service center (hsc) in venice, one of only two access centers to serve the westside's estimated 6,000+ homeless men and women; outreach teams throughout los angeles county, such as the vehicular homeless outreach program team vhop) who help families and individuals who are living out of cars, vans, and rvs; bread and roses cafe which prepares more than 300 meals a day for people experiencing homelessness; and the bread and roses pantry (formerly the sjc food pantry) helping more than 500 working poor families each week by providing groceries free of cost. St. Joseph center had 30,073 visits to the food pantry and served 42,322 meals at its cafe. Additionally, st. Joseph center contacted 3,719 clients through street outreach and engaged a total of 5,431 clients through its various engagement progams.

Mental health services are a critical part of sjc's program strategy. Programs in this service division include animo which provides mental health services to the underserved latino community; recovery, resilience and reintegration services for chronically homeless individuals who are isolated or unable to access traditional mental health outpatient services; the prevention and early intervention program (pei) that provides one-on-one counseling therapy; and the santa monica youth resource team who work with at-risk youth, ages 16-24, to stabilize their lives and improve their mental health. St. Joseph center provided 33,841 mental health services including individual therapy, targeted case management, group therapy etc. Altogether 769 clients received 40,078 hours of services.

Education and vocational training prevents at-risk individuals and families from losing their homes and provides skills training so people can get good paying jobs to support themselves and their families. Vocational training at sjc includes the bread and roses kitchen (formerly the culinary training program), codetalk which teaches recently homeless and underemployed women the skills they need to achieve self-sufficiency, and fortifi la, a tech training program for justice-experienced individuals. In addition, the sjc early learning center offers high quality pre-school for low-income families. St. Joseph center provided educational and vocational training to 47 clients with 91% graduation rate.